I just might be the only person in history who read about the song before I'd ever heard it. In the article I read, Bobbie Gentry said essentially that it didn't matter what they threw off the bridge; that was beside the point of the song, which was the callous indifference the girl's family showed her when they heard the news. For that reason, I never really stopped to think what they threw off the bridge once I did hear the song. I do like the love token theory, though.

You might be the first, but not the only one - I first read about this song when I clicked on this very thread yesterday and looked it up on Wikipedia after that. I've yet to hear the song.

Don Enrico

I rather like it; I have to admit a weakness for ballads. :o But I've always felt the music evokes the laziness of a hot Southern summer, and the gossippy nature of people. Although I haven't heard it in ages.

My personal theory it was some sort of love token (ring, whatever) exchanged between them. They broke up on the bridge, possibly prompted by the girl because her parents don't approve of Billie Joe, the casual way the parents bring up his suicide over dinner, adding that he never had a lick of sense indicates this.

The love token was tossed into the river symbolically. Billie Joe couldn't handle the rejection and came back to the same spot later and killed himself. The girl feels guilty she lost her appetite, cannot confide in her parents because they are obviously unsympathetic towards the fate of Billie Joe, and her only outlet for her grief is to pick flowers and to toss them into the water.

This was always my theory, also: she either refused or returned his ring. He tossed it, then followed it.

Four Kitties

__________________“The path to true enlightenment is the ability to formulate and express one's own thoughts, and not somebody else's.” -- Auntie Witch

As I said, it happens. However, it's one thing to hide a pregnancy when you're a mostly idle suburban teenage girl who lives in a spacious home with parents who both work and hardly see you, you spend a fair amount of time away from home (at school and with friends), and you can buy new clothing as needed for concealment; it's quite another thing when (as is presumably the case in the song) you're a poor, rural girl living in close quarters with parents and a sibling and spending your days doing physical labor.

Especially since her mother monitors her appetite so carefully. I always found this the major problem with the dead baby theory.

I always thought she and Billie Joe killed someone and threw his body off the bridge. Somebody saw them doing it and Billie Joe killed himself because he didn't want to be caught and sent to jail. The body wasn't found, but the girl goes to the bridge repeatedly to make sure it stays that way.

Actually, I know someone from England with just a passing familiarity with the song, who wanted to know whether it had anything to do with Emmett Till, whose body washed up on the banks of the Tallahatchie.

So, Billie Joe & the girl lynched a black boy for winking at her, then weighted the body down with a wagon wheel, and threw it off the bridge. Billie Joe either couldn't deal with the guilt, or thought the law was after him.

Seriously, I always thought it was a love token too. This explains the girl's guilt-- if she hadn't rejected him, he wouldn't have killed himself.

Don't you know how many calories those things have? They just force-fed him a couple, and the rest is history.

I just looked this up on Wikipedia, and it quote Bobbie Gentry as saying she didn't have a reason for Billie Joe's suicide-- the song was about the callous reaction of the family, not the suicide itself. That being the case, the McGuffin isn't of necessity anything that precipitates the suicide.

So why does the girl keep throwing flowers off the bridge? Is it like leaving flowers on a grave? Surely Billie Joe is buried somewhere-- I mean, if the body didn't wash up, how'd people know he threw himself off the bridge in the first place?

So why does the girl keep throwing flowers off the bridge? Is it like leaving flowers on a grave? Surely Billie Joe is buried somewhere-- I mean, if the body didn't wash up, how'd people know he threw himself off the bridge in the first place?

Well, I have seen a couple of places at least (one on the A20 into Maidstone, one on the A229 into Maidstone) where someone was killed in a car accident. I don't know the details, but fresh flowers are regularly placed in those spots, and it has been happening for years. Presumably the deceased have graves, but the bereaved feel the need to mark those spots.

Oh, would that all Billy Joel albums were cast into the mucky depths of the Tallahatchie River. God, I hate Billy Joel with a white hot passion. Growing up on Long Island, his awful music is shoved down your throat at any given opportunity.

So are you trying to say that you're no Uptown Girl who goes head over heals for a Piano Man who Loves You Just The Way You are, but laments that Only The Good Die Young when he talks to The Stranger on 52nd Street who, in return tells him to bugger off, and that it's My Life?

So are you trying to say that you're no Uptown Girl who goes head over heals for a Piano Man who Loves You Just The Way You are, but laments that Only The Good Die Young when he talks to The Stranger on 52nd Street who, in return tells him to bugger off, and that it's My Life?

I read the lyrics yesterday after reading this thread. I wondered myself if the thing thrown off the bridge had to be relevant. The two of them could've just liked throwing stones in the river.

I don't know. I felt there was an cryptic feel when the mother says, "He said he saw a girl who looked like you up on Choctaw Ridge. And she and Billy Joe was throwing something off of Talahachi Bridge."

I read that as Brother Taylor didn't approve of the union between Billie Joe and the girl, and was trying to grass her up to her parents, but without actually coming out with it straight - "I saw a girl who looked a lot like your daughter with Billie Joe. Not that I'm saying it was her of course."